Morgan Abrams
4 days until arrest
“Why are we meeting in a garbage room?”
Cassandra wrinkles her nose, stepping around a ripped black bag that’s spilling its guts of dirty paper plates and moldy pizza slices onto the floor. She’s not wrong to do so. This place reeks. Worse than usual, even. The nausea that greeted you when you woke this morning and spent too long staring at yourself in the bathroom mirror has come back with a vengeance. Churning at the back of your throat, palms sweating, chills running up your spine.
“Less, um– less c-c-cameras,” you manage to get out. Gesture towards the corners of the ceiling where some other ne’er-do-well has covered the domed bulbs of the security cameras with heavy applications of duct tape.
This whole conversation could have been had over Semaphore – nice and secure and safe – but noooo. They want to out-vote you? They want to do this in person? Then into the trash pit you all go.
You’re not bitter.
Shut up.
Brayden slouches, arms crossed over his chest and yet sticking as close as he can to Cassandra without it feeling like he’s hovering over her. She hasn’t once looked in his direction since he arrived save for a curt hello.
“Are we just waiting for Riley?” he asks.
You nod.
“What’s taking her so freaking long?”
She had texted saying she was on her way fifteen minutes ago. At a guess, depending on whether she’s starting from her apartment or from the school, she could be anywhere from a minute to another ten away.
Your fingers find the charms of your bracelet, turning them over and feeling the edges. Damnit Riley, hurry up. Black nail polish glints in the lamp light at you, sending a small thrill to your heart. No braid today, couldn’t get your fingers to cooperate. Riley does it better anyhow.
You keep waiting for someone to comment on it all. To say something disapproving. So far Brayden hasn’t even noticed. Cassandra has, you can feel it, but she’s also kept quiet. Moved on mentally before you could get a sense of what she thought.
Cassandra worries her lip, hands in her green jacket. Legs looking even longer than before from the combination of a short blue skirt with white tights. A white message pack is slung over one shoulder, bulging from whatever’s inside. There’s even a bow in her hair, tying it back into a ponytail. Her whole outfit looks so put together that it makes you jealous. Compared to her, you might as well be one of the rats nesting under the heap of garbage that’s piled in the far corner.
She catches you looking, one hand going to touch her hair. Adjusts her bow. “Um, is something wrong?”
You freeze for a second, force yourself to relax with a shake of your head. Immediate regret for the action comes in the form of a pounding inside your skull.
“N-no! Sorry. Just– um, just-just-just–” you manage to shut yourself down before you make even more of a fool of yourself. Digging fingernails into the skin of your wrist to ground yourself with.
“Jesus Christ, this place smells like ass,” Brayden interjects, unintentionally saving you. “We couldn’t have, like, at least met up somewhere else first?”
Yeah sure, great idea Brayden. Then the Super would have seen you all traveling together right into one of its security holes. Not suspicious at all.
You’re in the middle of trying to piece together a sentence with the right amount of scathing disdain when Riley marches into the room.
“Welcome to D-Class, fuckos,” she announces.
Oh thank god.
Riley kicks a crushed soda can out of her way, arcing it so it hits the closed doors of a trash chute and clatters onto the pile of abandoned bags. Her arms launch upwards with a cheer.
“Hell yeah! Put me on the soccer team, coach!”
Cassandra covers her mouth as she laughs. “Hi Riley!”
“Where the hell were you?” Brayden snaps.
“Mom was giving me the Big Lecture again,” Riley answers with a shrug. Shoves her hands into her pant pockets and picks her way through the trash on her way to you.
“The big lecture?” Cassandra asks.
“Oh you know, same old same old.” Riley puts her hands on her hips and pitches her voice up in a less-than-kind imitation of her mother’s accent. “Young lady, there’s no future in fucking women! You simply must stop cutting your hair and wear this shitty dress at all times! Also marry a man and have his kids, look how well it’s worked out for me, I’m a fry cook. Wargle blargle blargle.”
You have to cover your mouth to keep from laughing. “Riley, that’s mean,” you sign quickly.
Brayden rolls his eyes while next to him Cassandra has also covered her mouth. Not in laugher though, but in shock. “She did not say that.”
“Well, no, not exactly. I don’t think that woman’s physically capable of cursing,” Riley concedes with a shrug. She hesitates, eyeing up Cassandra with a calculating expression. “So like… you’re seriously not bothered by me, huh?”
“Um… should I be?” Cassandra’s mouth purses into a frown. “I think it’s sad what you’re being put through by everyone.”
That catches Riley off guard. It takes her a few seconds to put together an articulate response.
“Sad?” she asks. Her entire posture slumps. “I can’t believe I’m getting the pity talk from the rich white girl.”
“I just mean–” Cassandra’s face colors, “–you just want to love who you love, right? Why should that matter to anyone else? And I was doing some reading, last night actually, trying to understand what the problem could possibly be–”
“I think being an ‘abomination before God’ or whatever kind of sums it up.”
“–but you know what? There’s been studies? Real actual studies that suggest that the Moral Code Act of ’76 resulted in a net decrease in economic activity totaling almost–”
Brayden coughs loudly into his hand, cutting her off. “Cass, you’re going to scare her off if you start dumping numbers.”
Cassandra’s flush intensifies and she drops her gaze down to the floor. “Oh? Oh! Sorry!”
“It’s okay?” Riley gives what may be the world’s most uncomfortable thumbs up. “Thanks for… being cool about it? I think?”
Brayden waves a hand through the air, eager brush the whole subject aside. “Don’t we have more important stuff to talk about right now?”
Riley wags a finger at him. “Moumentai! Garbage room bonding is sacred.”
“Not calling it your ‘office’ anymore?”
“Nah dude, business is closed until this Imago shit is over. Everyone’s too on edge and on alert, you know? No way am I getting my ass busted for weed money.”
Brayden grunts in response. Decides he’d rather go loom in the doorway and look like he’s playing at being lookout while minimizing his exposure to the room’s stench.
Damn.
Wish you’d thought of that first.
Cassandra gives you a weak smile. “Are you okay, Morgan? You look a little green.”
“Fine,” you manage. You don’t ‘look green’ you look a perfectly normal non-green color. Your stomach is not threatening mutiny from being slammed with the same rancid garbage smell four times at once, and you’re definitely not sweating like crazy. Everything is placidly calm and unaffected.
It’s. Fine.
“You want a pep?” Riley asks, her attention drawn back to you. “I’ve gotta bunch,” she adds, digging through her pockets.
You shake your head.
Everything. Is. Fine.
“I’ll take one,” Brayden says, holding out a hand.
Riley winks at you before skipping over to him. Pulls the packet out of her pocket and tears off a tab. Brayden mumbles a ‘thanks’ and pops it into his mouth and chews.
“Can we fucking talk about what we came here to do now?”
Cassandra frowns at him. “Bray, be nice.”
He doesn’t answer right away. Rolls his shoulder and glances out down the corridor. “Sorry, alright? It’s just – I’m on edge today, I guess.”
“We can tell, dude,” Riley scoffs.
“The Imago attack yesterday was right outside my mom’s department.”
“Oh shit.” Riley’s eyebrows shoot up. “Why didn’t you say anything before?”
“I only found out she was that close to it this morning.”
“Oh my gosh, Bray!” Cassandra gasps. “Is everyone okay?”
He shrugs. “My mom is fine, I guess? She’s real pissed her favorite assistant is out for a week on surgical leave and now she has to get her own coffee.”
“That’s what she’s mad about? Dude, your mom sucks,” Riley says. “How many attacks are we up to now, anyway?”
“It feels like there’s been at least one every week,” Brayden answers.
You hold up a number of fingers on your hand.
Riley sees and sucks in her breath. “Seven? There’s been seven? In, what, a month? How are we all still just going to school like nothing is happening? Why haven’t they declared a national emergency, holy shit.”
“Probably don’t want to disrupt business,” Brayden says.
Riley throws her hands in the air. “I. Hate. This company!”
You knew there had been another attack in Central, up in the Praxis marketing department. It had been all over the Chattrnet and news channels, with people shocked and furious that the attacks were still happening.
Cassandra already has her phone out, typing out some sort of personal note. “Brayden, who was it that got hurt? We can send her a card later and–”
“Phone c-c-check,” you prompt to a chorus of groans. Your own is already in hand, screen black. You told them all. Show up with phones off. That’s the rule. And here they are, phones still on. You knew they wouldn’t listen. You called it.
“C’mon man,” Brayden protests, “are you seriously going to make us do this every time?”
You stare at him. “Yes.”
“Just do it, dude,” Riley says, coming to your defense. “We don’t need to go inviting more problems on us.”
Cassandra dithers the longest, wanting the name of the injured assistant to write down first, but eventually you succeed in getting all of them to shut their phones off. Too late not to look suspicious if someone’s already watching. Just going to have to hope no one with access is paying too close attention to a bunch of teenagers.
With the last phone away, Riley takes charge. She claps her hands together and bounces on the heels of her feet. “Okay Rotten Apples–”
“Do we have to call ourselves that?” Brayden whines.
“Yes, absolutely,” Riley answers without missing a beat. “Has anyone heard anything new about the FBI investigation? Let’s start there.”
The rest of you look among yourselves, shaking your heads.
After a moment, Cassandra raises a hand halfway. “I think they’re interviewing people in Research? I overheard my internship supervisor complaining about people being pulled while in the middle of projects…”
“Th-th-they have?” you stutter.
“You didn’t know?”
Shake your head. Trying hard to think back over the last few times you’ve seen Rivka. In passing, for a few minutes. You haven’t seriously talked since you found out she was smoking again, and if there was anything important to learn from that particular meeting, you can’t remember. Lost in a haze of sleep exhaustion, stress, and cigarette smoke.
“They’re just… interviewing people? That’s it? Still?” Riley asks. “No wonder we’re still getting a monster attack, like, every week.”
“Maybe they’re chasing down anyone who knows stuff about Imago? Or nanites in general?” Brayden offers to the group. “How many people could that possibly be?”
“Praxis has three different subsidiaries in the arcology that run nanite research,” Cassandra shoots back, counting them off on her fingers. “Biotique specializes in medical applications, Dollox is materials science, and Armuro handles military contracts. So… a lot?”
“Great.”
Riley snaps her fingers. “If they’re bothering to do that, they must have realized the same thing we did, right? About the security footage being edited?”
“Or they just haven’t gotten around to Cass yet,” Brayden says, dumping the metaphorical bowl of cold water over everything. “If you’re right, that means there’s probably even more edited security footage than we thought.”
“Is that… good or bad for us?” Cassandra asks.
“Good, right? It has to be.”
“Actually, one second,” Cassandra swings her bag over her chest and starts digging through it. The first thing she pulls out is a sheet of paper. A list of everywhere Rivka told her to put a reader, she tells the group.
You grab it out of her hand without asking and start mentally comparing it with the list you put together. Why did she have to wait a whole week to share this? Could have just posted it in Semaphore.
“Yo, Morgan, you’ve still got everything on that tablet of yours, right?” Riley asks you.
It’s already in your hands and booting up. The OS logo flashes across the screen, a customized picture of a biohazard symbol – last night’s idea of a funny joke. It feels kind of embarrassing in the light of morning. At least none of the others can see it from this angle.
Can feel Brayden’s eyes on you as you skim through your folders and pull up the videos. “And what makes you the exception to the ‘no phones’ rule?”
You want to roll your eyes. It’s not a phone, for one. Obviously. There’s none of the fine positional data – you manually disabled that ages ago along with the Wi-Fi. Cable connections only. No microphone or camera either.
“B-b-because I know wh-what I’m– what I’m doing.”
Brayden clears his throat, eager to retake control of the conversation. “We’ve got two conflicting lists of places Cass was supposed to visit from Mrs–” he pauses, stares at you. “Morgan, is it Ms. or Mrs.? Actually, hold up, is your mom even married? You still owe me an explanation about the whole ‘adopted’ thing.”
“Adopted?” Cass asks.
“Not adopted. And no, I d-d-don’t,” you state flatly without looking up at either of them.
After confirming with Cassandra that the meeting with Rivka as recorded was real, it only takes a few taps to bring back up the list of reader locations. With Cassandra’s list on hand, you can compare hard copy to hard copy. Better than relying on memory alone.
Why these places, anyway? In either list? Some of them are specific names while others are arcology addresses that need to be looked up to identify. Grocery stores, doctor offices, random businesses or company departments.
“The um, the-the-the grocery store we got attacked at is on here,” you announce, halfway down the list. There’s a couple different grocery stores on this list, actually.
“Are you sure?” Cassandra asks. Looks incredibly unhappy when you nod yes.
“Which means not all of the security footage Morgan found in the Super is made up,” declares Brayden.
“Can we say that for sure? Just because Cass was actually there doesn’t mean it was her specific box thing that we saw on the video,” Riley counters. She kicks a glass bottle back and forth between her feet. “That poor lady’s dog.”
“It’s got to be, right? Why would there be multiple different boxes?”
“Can you prove it though, dude? You’re the only one that saw one of those boxes in person.”
You find yourself raising your hand. “I um, saw a b-b-bunch in storage.”
Riley huffs, unconvinced. “If those are even the same ones, right? We don’t even have one of Cass’ to look at.”
Cassandra bites her lip, steeling herself.“Um, well, about that,” she starts, patting her bag. “I still have one, actually? Since you’ve been talking about them so much over the phone and all.”
She pulls a boxy looking plastic bag out of her messenger bag. Inside the plastic bag is a second, black plastic bag. Inside of that, wrapped in yet more plastic, is a small white box.
Like the ones you found in the storage room in Rivka’s lab, it looks like some sort of air filter. Removed from its many layers of wrapping, now left scattered on the ground, it’s just big enough to hold in one’s hands.
Riley’s the first to say something. “Oh shit. Have you been carrying that around all day?”
“No! Just to here.” Her face colors. “I was supposed to put it up in this night club and uh, I got turned away because they wanted ID.”
“Is it safe?” Brayden asks.
“Um…” Cassandra’s anxiety over the question bubbles out as laughter. “I hope so?”
“Dude, if this is how we all die, I might be a little pissed,” Riley says. “Uh… we should mask up right?”
“Good idea!” Cassandra agrees with a nervous laugh.
Silently, all four of you put on face masks. You have to tuck your tablet under your arm, unwilling to let it rest on this floor.
The mask does nothing for the smell of the room. Makes it worse, even, with the wet hotness of your own breath. Fighting back another wave of nausea you wipe your palms clean on the front of your pants.
“C-can I, um, can I see?” you ask. Cassandra hands the box to you without complaint, looking eager to be rid of it.
“Well?” Riley asks after a second of letting you look it over.
“It um, it’s definitely the same as the-the-the ones I saw at Rivka’s lab.”
Out of the packaging, you can clearly see a power button right above the indicator light. On the back side, where there’s no intake-outtake vents, a connection port is visible, right above a retractable cord for plugging it into an outlet.
“Any idea what it does?” Riley asks, getting closer.
“Um… c-c-can you see if it looks, uh, tampered with?” You hand it over to her and pat down your pockets for a USB cable.
Once you have one in hand, you plug the box into your tablet, prompting it to automatically start installing a series of drivers to operate the thing.
“Looks untouched to me,” Riley declares. She thrusts it in Brayden’s direction. “You see anything off?”
It’s not without a little satisfaction that you notice the way Brayden recoils from the thing. “Cass, Dr. Abrams never told you what this thing was actually for?”
“Just taking air quality measurements. …Air filters can do that, right?”
Riley raises an eyebrow at her. “How can you know all this nerd shit and not what an air filter does?”
“I wha– bwuh– those things are interesting!”
“What’s your tablet saying?” Brayden asks.
You bite down on the inside of your cheek. “I… don’t know?” With the application for the air filter downloaded, you can see all the settings, usage stats, service dates. Most of which are blank or at zero. Which… makes sense if it’s never been used, except… “It’s set to-to-to put something out?”
Riley snorts. “This thing puts out?”
You reach over and gently smack her on the head. “I mean it’s not um, t-taking any measurements? It… doesn’t seem like it can. Just… it’s got a um, a scent… function? It’s loaded with something. But whatever that is, it’s unregistered.”
“Oh,” Riley says. “Awesome. Very legit sounding.”
Gingerly and by the tips of his fingers, Brayden lifts the box out of Riley’s hands, turning it this way and that. “Where’s the–” you push a button on the UI labeled eject and a tray pops out of the side of the air filter. “–thanks.”
A small plastic cup lifts out of the tray, full of a clear liquid. Riley laughs, anxiety creeping into her voice. “This isn’t gonna, like, kill us, right?”
“P-p-probably not.”
“Oh good! So certain!”
Cassandra leans over, staring into it. “So… what is it?”
“Someone sniff it. If you start foaming at the mouth, we’ll know it’s dangerous.”
“I nominate B-brayden,” you say.
Riley claps her hands. “Seconded!”
“Fuck you guys.” He lifts the cup to his face, grimacing.
A long moment passes in silence.
“Bray… you okay?” Cassandra watches him, eyes wide.
“It doesn’t smell like anything,” he observes.
A second later, he adds, “I feel fine.”
“Hey, Brayden, try drinking it,” Riley says.
He makes a face and shakes his head. “Are you crazy? You do it.”
“Nuh-uh, no way.”
Now certified safe, you take the cup from him. Raising it to your face for a closer look under the ceiling lights, it doesn’t seem any different. Some sort of clear liquid, and yet, you seriously doubt it’s just water. Despite what Brayden said, it has a kind of acrid smell to it, strong enough to cut through the haze of garbage. Almost like something burning.
You wince, pulling the cup away, suddenly woozy.
Riley’s eyebrows crease across her face, watching you. “You okay, man?”
“Smells bad.”
“Let me see,” she says, taking the cup from you. “Uh… I’m with Brayden, I don’t smell anything. Are you sure you’re not just smelling the trash?”
You wrinkle your nose. That makes more sense. Way more sense than you somehow detecting something no one else is.
“Um… maybe?”
She passes the cup to Cassandra, who confirms the same thing. The whole time that woozy burning sensation continues to build. Like the feeling after a really bad sneeze.
“Is there like, some sort of test we can do to see what it is?” Riley asks.
“Th-th-there might um, might be something in Rivka’s lab that would tell us,” you say as you gather up the connection cable and put it away. If the air filters are being stored in plain sight then maybe whatever’s being put inside them is as easy to find too.
You’d have to either find an excuse to go there or rely on Cassandra. Rub at your face, trying to will your stomach to calm down and head to stop throbbing. If you were operating at full capacity, obvious stuff like this wouldn’t be flying by you, surely.
Riley’s face creases in concern, one hand going for your shoulder. “You sure you’re okay, dude?”
“Y-yeah,” you answer automatically.
Still, it’s no small sense of relief when the cup gets put back into the air filter and Cassandra wraps it back up in its multiple layers of plastic.
“So if the boxes Cassandra had don’t do anything, does that mean there’s a second set of boxes that do trigger an Imago attack out there?” Brayden is talking, pacing the floor again while Riley rubs your back.
“Do we know this one was a dud?” Riley asks. When she catches you glaring at her, she waves a hand in protest. “Look! Hear me out! I’m just saying, for like, matters of principle here, right? None of us have NMIV, so it wouldn’t have worked on any of us anyway.”
“You didn’t sound so sure before,” Brayden mutters.
“What about the victims? We haven’t talked about them at all. Do we know anything about who’s been attacked?” Cassandra asks.
“The victims?” Riley repeats.
“Their names, jobs, histories… I–” she laughs anxiously at everyone looking at her.
No one answers.
“You guys have been looking into that, right? This is Real Crime basics. Even an accidental murder can still have clues in the who, why, and how, and it’s hard to imagine something like an Imago attack could be an accident.”
“Nope! All the running around we’ve done, that’s never come up,” Riley finally says.
“Um, Rivka said something. Similar? I forgot about it until now.” You bite the inside of your cheek, trying to tease out the thread of familiarity. How exactly did she put it? Something about how the Tomorrowists always had a reason for their targets?
“Right!” Cassandra smiles at you, pleased. “Okay, well. I really, really think we should research this! Call it our homework for the week?”
Riley clutches her chest. “Homework? Girl, you wanna give me extra homework?”
“We all have our own way of seeing things, right? So if we all look we might find something the rest of us would have missed. I just– I really think this is important, you guys. Knowing what each attack could be accomplishing might tell us a lot about why someone would do them, and that could suggest who’s behind it.”
“I told you guys Cass is smart,” Brayden says smugly.
“Wait, what? I thought we were just trying to cover our asses and keep whatever’s going on from blowing us up. Since when are we detectives?”
“I–” Cassandra stops, puffs up her cheeks. “The arcology is our home, isn’t it? And someone is out there, right now, mucking it all up for us! If we can figure out even one clue that could help the FBI catch the culprit, wouldn’t that be a good thing?”
Riley frowns, unconvinced. “You know the police are just gonna grab whomever looks like an easy target, call it job done, and fuck off the second the attacks stop, right?” She looks over in your direction, maybe expecting back-up, but no.
“Cassandra’s right,” you say. That the FBI might take an easy answer just makes it more important to make sure they find the right solution.
“Okay, great. More work. Love that for us.” Riley claps her hands together. “Okay team, any other ideas or have we hit our limit on garbage time?”
“Morgan, do you still have the pics of all those research papers from your mom’s office?” Brayden asks, a jolt of connection faster than you can follow it.
“Uh– yes?”
“Can you show ‘em to Cass?” When you continue to stare blankly at him, he adds, “We can see if there’s anything that doesn’t match up there, too.”
What’s the point? If there was something specific in those papers worth mentioning, Cassandra would have brought it up by now, right? Still, find yourself hesitating at the weight of everyone’s attention on you.
“Okay?”
“What are you getting at, dude?” Riley asks for you.
“I just…” Brayden paces back and forth along a narrow strip of clear floor. “What if this is company politics?”
Riley blinks, looking as mystified as you feel. “How?”
“Maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way? Like Cass said about looking into the victims, right? So… who gains and who suffers from all this?”
“Praxis sure hasn’t stopped normal operations for any of this.”
“Right! Which is crazy, you said it.” Brayden looks energized, excited. Really thinks he’s on to something with this. “So what if someone at Praxis is the one that wants this all to happen?”
Riley stares at him. “Did you get enough sleep, dude? What happened to your vendetta against Morgan’s mom?”
“I’m getting to that part. I’m still putting it together in my head.”
You share a look with Cassandra. It only takes a few taps to bring those up and then the tablet gets passes around again for her inspection.
Cassandra pulls her mask down off her face with a frown, lips pursed in total concentration as she goes through picture after picture. Confirming each one in turn as a paper she got for Rivka.
“Well that’s something, right? We can rule out the idea of you having met with a doppelgänger,” Riley jokes.
Cassandra pauses at the last set of photos, mouth twisting in concentration.“Chrysalis?” she asks, looking up from the tablet at you. “This isn’t one of the papers I printed out for her.”
Brayden quickly looms over her, reading the screenshot. “It has a Dr. Abrams as an author.”
You shake your head. “Different um, different first initial.”
“Maybe she… changed her first name?” Cassandra asks.
“If she used to be a terrorist, that makes sense,” Brayden answers, dead serious.
“N-n-not a terrorist.”
That gets Riley to laugh. “If you were gonna do that, wouldn’t you just change your entire name?”
“That’s too obvious though.” Brayden says.
“How is that too obvious?”
“No one would think you’d just change half your name, they’d assume what you just did. It’s the perfect cover.”
“What? That’s so stupid.”
“Nah, it’s just stupid enough.”
Cassandra is silent while the two of them bicker, squinting at the tablet screen. Finally she looks up, finds you staring back at her.
“I think it’s something about… cybercell development?” She looks back to the screen and, after a few seconds of silent reading, laughs anxiously. “It kind of sounds like they were trying to invent… um, this is gonna sound silly.”
“Try us,” Brayden says.
Cassandra bites her lower lip, re-reading the text on the screen again to make sure of her conclusion. “Okay, bear in mind I only have these pictures to go off of, but… it sounds like they were trying to invent, well, um, glitches? Or something like them?”
“Something like them,” Brayden echoes.
“But before anyone had ever heard of nanite glitching.”
Riley shakes her head. “Hold up, Morgan gave me this huge lecture about how you can’t glitch someone on purpose.”
“I mean, we know that now,” Cassandra concedes. “But this is from the 60s? And we didn’t even see glitches start to happen until the last twenty years or so, right? There’s actually all kinds of theories as to why but the one with the strongest evidence points to the sheer build up of nanite exposure in the biosphere, suggests some sort of critical mass effect, except not even that’s fully sufficient because otherwise we’d be seeing glitched animals in the wild.”
Brayden’s still peering over her shoulder at your tablet. “Why not?”
“Part of the problem is that the Herz-Vilder process–”
Riley shoots you a look as Cassandra starts explaining what on earth a Herz-Vilder process is and why it can’t be maintained inside a living organism. It is a face that says how did I become surrounded by fucking nerds?
You shrug and return the look with one of your own. One that says it’s your own fault for befriending them.
She huffs, blowing a strand of hair out of her face. It’s just as well you already know… most of what Cassandra is talking about. The more you try to focus on her voice the more your attention slips off, the static thrum drowning everything out.
“If th-th-there’s something… political going on, it’s…” Stop, wait. Rethink the sentence. “This is… someone is d-d-doing this to– to Rivka. Framing her, for all this. Why fake security records? Why a fake list?”
“But Cass–” Brayden starts to interrupt.
You raise your voice to talk over him. “C-C-Cassandra is a nobody! Uh, no offense.”
“None taken?” Cassandra smiles back at you, radiating anxiety.
Brayden stops his pacing to stare at you. “Cass’ family are important. Like, actually important. They’ve been HR for literally forever. Who ever heard of Dr. Abrams before she worked here? You told me yourself you’ve got no actual family, right?”
“Bray,” Cassandra cautions.
“I’m not attacking anyone, I’m just stating facts. If anybody’s a nobody here, it’s Dr. Abrams. And look, Morgan, we’ve heard all about your mom. She sounds like a psychopath! Is it really that much a stretch to think she’d go from just talking about killing people to actually doing it?”
You’re going to hit him. You’re gonna do it.
Just a light punch. Just one. He deserves it.
Riley intervenes before Brayden can realize what he’s in for, one hand on your shoulder, gently holding you back. To Brayden she says, “I dunno dude, she talks a big game, but if there’s anything that woman cares about, it’s her job, right? You’re suggesting she’s gone completely crazy or something. I actually think it makes a lot of sense to look at it from the angle of someone going after Morgan’s mom?”
You shoot Riley a grateful look. Finally someone here is talking sense.
Brayden isn’t having it. “How does it make sense, Riley?”
“She oversees all the research Biotique is doing, right? I bet lots of people want that spot. And she’d probably be real tough to do the normal Praxis thing with – like, bribery or intimidation, I mean. She is psychic, right? Probably have to work extra hard to get the drop on someone like that.”
Your stomach lurches.
Goddamnit, Riley.
“Psychic?” Cassandra echoes, wide-eyed.
Brayden’s head snaps up. Voice cold. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
Riley freezes, a rictus grin on her face. She glances back towards you. “Uh, did I say that? That’s uh– that’s–”
“Morgan’s mom is glitched? Not just glitched but a fucking mindreader?”
“Haha, did I say that, whoops just bullshitting you. Wacky Riley, at it again!”
“No! Fuck that!” Brayden pushes past her, getting way too into your space. You step back on instinct, nearly slipping on a bag of trash as his face fills your vision.
“Explain. Now.”
You want to press your eyes hard enough to force them out the other side of your head, but you manage to make yourself settle for just covering your face while you bite your cheek.
“Dude, forget I said anything. Morgan doesn’t have to explain shit.”
“Like hell he doesn’t.” There’s no way Brayden is letting this go. “Riley, you don’t get to just drop that into the conversation and ask us all to move on like it never happened!”
He stomps his foot and turns away. Mad. Real mad. Hands clenching into fists mad. He huffs, turns back to you. Too close again.
“Did either one of you think something like that was, I don’t know, maybe fucking important? That we deserved to be clued in on the fact that your mom–” he thrusts a finger in your direction, close enough that you have to lean back, “isn’t just like, maybe a terrorist or a bitch or whatever, but could be a literal fucking supervillain? You didn’t think that was maybe relevant to how we fucking handle this situation?”
You don’t answer right away.
This is why. This is why you don’t tell people things.
They come at with all their own preconceptions and they’re all wrong, blown up by decades of media predating glitches or real, actual telepathy, and they think it’s some kind of creepy privacy violating superpower and not a constant information overload headache. And then they get mad about it – mad at you about it. For something you can’t even help. Can’t even control.
Finally, as your stomach roils in revolt against you, and in defiance of your better judgement, you make yourself shake your head.
“It’s– it’s not like that.”
“Then explain it for me, dude, because this seems like a pretty fucking important detail to just not warn us about.”
“Man, lay off.” Riley’s stepping back between him and you now.
“Don’t even start with me, Parson! You knew and you didn’t say anything either! This bitch can fucking read our minds and who knows what else!”
“W-well um, it’s uh, more c-c-complicated. Than– than that,” you stammer. Withering under his stare. “G-glitches like that are um, well there’s uh, there’s lots of– of well, the s-s-signal to noise ratio is… What I mean is that, uh–”
“The what to the what?” Oh good, you’re losing him.
Wish you could say the same for Cassandra. Her face is lit up with excitement. Virtual stars in her eyes as she puts the pieces together way faster than you’d like.
“You said you did testing with Dr. Abrams–”
Oh no no no, why did you have to tell her that?
“–you have the same glitch, don’t you? That’s so cool!”
“WHAT?” Brayden’s eyes are bugging out of his head.
This disaster would almost be worth getting to make him have a meltdown if it wasn’t also making you want to expel your insides like sea cucumber in mortal danger.
“Dude!” Riley hushes him, waving her hands. “You want everyone down the hall to hear you? Moumentai!”
“Fuck your stupid, made-up word!”
“Hey asshole! It’s not made up!”
Brayden isn’t having it. Desperately wants to reach around Riley and throttle you for the second time in five minutes.
“You assholes didn’t think that any of this was important to share with the rest of us?!”
“Dude, chillax.” Riley glares up at him. Hands on her hips and trying to summon every inch of height she possesses in your defense.
”How does it–“ Cassandra starts, falters as Brayden barrels ahead, ignoring them both.
“This is bullshit. How long have we known each other? Didn’t we used to be fucking friends? Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
You at least manage to get to as far as the big trash pile before your stomach violently empties itself.